Union Leader Accused of Harassment and Heading Up ‘Sexist Boys Club’

The general secretary of a major international trade union federation has been accused of multiple counts of workplace harassment and leading “a masculine, sexist, patriarchal boys club” where union money was spent on boozy trips to strip clubs and women workers were left traumatised, a Novara Media investigation can reveal. 

Testimony from multiple current and former employees and backed by internal documents shows how the misogynistic culture at the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) left women “broken”, with staff frequently frustrated in their attempts to address sexist work practices.

Many are now worried that an ongoing redundancy process is being used to get rid of anyone who might raise concerns in what one staff member referred to as a “deletion of organisational memory”.

Two women told Novara Media they were harassed by Stephen Cotton, the British head of the ITF. One said that during a work conference, Cotton barged into her hotel room late at night, refused to leave and verbally abused her. Another said he followed her into a women’s toilet and said he “really wanted to fuck” her.

A spokesperson for the ITF told Novara Media: “The general secretary denies the allegations made. One case was investigated and mediated at the time, with no wrongdoing found.”

Everyone who spoke to Novara Media did so on condition of anonymity, fearing there would be repercussions for whistleblowing. They all said they wanted to challenge the federation’s management, rather than criticise the ITF itself.

“I’ve got to the point where I just think that they’re corrupt,” one current staff member said. 

“There’s a small group of people who are just holding onto this organisation and extracting as much as they can from it.”

In a statement to Novara Media, Paddy Crumlin, ITF president, and Frank Moreels, who will take over the presidency in January 2027, admitted that the “pervasive misogyny and lack of accountability” that exists in the transport industry “will inevitably be reflected in the culture and governance of the ITF”. 

They added: “The ITF is committed to changing that reality and is taking ongoing action to eliminate unacceptable behaviour.”

‘I don’t know how he got my room number.’

The ITF is a global federation of 677 trade unions, to which major British unions including the RMT, Unite, ASLEF, GMB, PCS and the TSSA are affiliated. It calls itself “the voice for nearly 16.5 million transport workers across the world”, “fight[ing] passionately to improve workers’ lives”.

The ITF claims to exist “to protect and improve women’s lives and futures” in particular, and to confront discrimination in a “male dominated transport industry”. It boasts of the “important role” it played in securing International Labour Organisation Convention 190, which “defines what violence and harassment means – including gender-based violence and harassment”. 

Cotton, general secretary of the ITF since 2014, hailed the convention as “an opportunity for unions” – which have been far from immune from the kind of gendered discrimination which affects workplaces across the economy – “to reform from within, with a gender-transformative approach that addresses the unique challenges faced by women workers”. 

Cotton himself, however, has been accused by multiple women who spoke to Novara Media of workplace harassment.

In 2019, an ITF delegation travelled to the Vatican City for a summit with trade unions and manufacturers. Addressing the summit on the topic of modern day slavery, Cotton said: “The ITF can commit to an ongoing dialogue between us, the Catholic Church and the businesses in this room.”

Following the summit, having made his peace with God, according to a woman who worked in his office, Cotton “forced himself” into her hotel room.

“To this day, I don’t know how he got my room number,” she said. “But he knocked on my door, then forced himself in late at night and wouldn’t leave, despite repeated requests for him to leave at that time.

“When he came in, he just started screaming at me, telling me I was worthless, that I had never done anything of value for the ITF, that he had the permission to fire me.”

The woman said Cotton left around 20 minutes.

“I didn’t think it’s appropriate for anyone to come to your room, especially uninvited,” the woman said. “There’s a power dynamic. I’m a woman, this is late at night, if there was no pressing issue, it’s just wholly inappropriate for him to come to my room.”

The ITF said Cotton denies the allegation.

The worker did not report the incident straight away. “I was not comfortable at the time to speak up, because I had seen what had happened to other women in the organisation that tried to speak up. I watched how they were alienated. Their work was taken away. They were forced out. They were ridiculed for no valid reason.”

It wasn’t until years later that two affiliated trade unions wrote to the ITF expressing concern about the incident and demanding an investigation. 

In February 2021, Dennis Daggett, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, sent a letter asking Paddy Crumlin, president of the ITF, to look into “serious transgressions” against the woman, including her report of an “after hours confrontation” with Cotton. The same month, William E Adams, international president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, wrote to Crumlin asking what the ITF’s plan was “for thoroughly investigating the alleged after-hours confrontation”.

Sharan Burrow, then the International Trade Union Congress (ITUC) general secretary and viewed by sources who spoke to Novara Media as a longstanding ally of Cotton, was asked to mediate between Cotton and the woman. In an email seen by Novara Media, Burrow told him: “We didn’t ever discuss a single incident. ie. Rome. I can, but to date have deterred her [the woman] from listing incidents, including specifics etc. as I told her you would be entitled to respond.”

In a subsequent mediation agreement, Cotton offered an unreserved apology to the woman for “the feelings of exclusion or loss of work you experienced”. 

“On reflection, I recognise how workplace hierarchies and dynamics may have caused these feelings of intimidation,” he said. “I take full responsibility for my actions.” It was also agreed that there would be annual office-wide training on sexual harassment and that the federation would develop a transparent internal complaints process.

However, the woman left the ITF two years later in 2024, after lodging a complaint that she had been subjected to continuing retaliation following the incident in Rome. The complaint was later rejected in an investigation – seen by Novara Media – by Howlett Brown, an outsourced HR consultancy used by the ITF.

In another alleged incident, a former ITF employee who worked in the maritime section in London said that in 2013, when Cotton was the ITF’s maritime coordinator, he followed her into the women’s toilet at an after-work social event in Chicago.

“I was going into the ladies toilet and Steve Cotton followed me in and said, ‘I don’t know why, but since you got married, it makes me really want to fuck you’,” she told Novara Media.

“It’s just disgusting. He knew I just got married and he knew my husband was there.

“I was really shocked. I’d heard about his reputation. When I first started, somebody told me ‘You’ve got to watch out for Steve Cotton’ … but nothing like that had ever happened to me personally.”

“I went into the cubicle. He didn’t follow me into the cubicle.

“It made me feel like shit. It made me feel angry that he felt like he could do that to me, and that I wasn’t respected as a member of staff. It’s the brazenness of it, and the fact he thought, ‘I could just say that to my staff, and nothing will happen’.”

The ITF said Cotton denies the allegation.

The woman did not report the incident. Reflecting on why, she said: “He’s like a king, you know. So what am I going to do? … Everybody else is under him.”

Novara Media spoke to the woman’s then-husband, as well as a former ITF employee, who both confirmed that she spoke to them about the incident at the time. She left the federation years later after settling over an unrelated grievance.

The ITF said: “The ITF does not comment on confidential individual cases. We again assert that our policies and independent mechanisms are robust, transparent, reviewable, and applied to all individuals regardless of position they hold within the organisation.”

Such alleged incidents came about within a culture of casual sexism, macho bravado and a clique of favoured people around the general secretary known as the “Cotton Club”, current and former staff told Novara Media.

“There was a joke that women get membership to the Cotton Club for free,” said the woman who worked in his office.

There were often puerile jokes, she added, like “‘Oh, are they pregnant? Their baby is going to come out looking like Steve’”, and “constantly ridiculing certain members of the executive or that were women or women staff, like they weren’t good enough, or they’re just bitches. 

“Everywhere you look, there was something negative about women,” she said.

Reflecting on the atmosphere of casual misogyny, she said: “It makes me sick to my stomach looking back, when you have members of the executive board going, ‘Oh, he’s the Harvey Weinstein of the labour movement’. It’s, ‘Oh, we know he’s this bad, but it’s Steve’. It just was dismissed.”

In 2016, a meme circulated on a messaging app by David Heindel, chairman of the ITF’s seafarers section. The meme was titled “Steve’s greatest hits (a montage)”, and included  images such as Cotton holding an award with the caption “Any single ladies looking for a ride on my flagship with me and my little buddy?” and another proclaiming Cotton as “Vagina man!”, a superhero. Cotton commented that it was “beautifully crafted”.

Heindel did not respond to Novara Media’s request for comment.

The woman who worked in Cotton’s office said: “Steve himself would say stuff like, ‘Oh, you know, there’s a rumour about me and you that we’re hooking up’. And you’re like, ‘Seriously?’ He was known to start rumours.”

‘A profoundly sexist culture.’

The allegations against Cotton were not the only cause of concern at the ITF, Novara Media has been told. In fact, a misogynistic workplace culture existed from the top to the bottom of the union, with the necessity of frequent travel to international work events giving ample and regular opportunities for debauched after-work activities.

The woman who worked in Cotton’s office said delegates would end up in “bars where sex workers frequent”. 

“It was pretty normal for us to end up in places like this after an official dinner or some function,” she said. “It wasn’t just one country. This happened in Panama and South Africa, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand. It was no secret that people were okay with [this type of behaviour], they knew it was happening.

“There were multiple occasions that I can attest to where we were at strip clubs where the ITF card was used to pay for a tab,” she added. “There were times we were asked to put our cards down. Like, ‘I need your card’. I don’t remember ever paying for a strip club or anything, because I refused to.”

Cotton himself would be in such places “on occasion”, she said. Another source told Novara Media they had seen Cotton in a bar where sex workers were present.

“Sometimes you’d end up in a taxi and you wouldn’t even know where you’re going until you got there,” the woman who worked in Cotton’s office said.

A current ITF staff member recounted an incident in Casablanca, Morocco, in which he was taken to a bar after a workshop only to discover it was a strip club. Surprised, he left along with a colleague, who he recalls as noting that they had “just done half a day [of workshops] on violence against women.”

The staff member told Novara Media: “This behaviour was ubiquitous among maritime unions. This is how they ingratiate you. It’s a test – can you be trusted? It’s like the mob.”

The woman who worked in the general secretary’s office said that use of strip clubs “could happen anywhere. They were okay with that culture, regardless of where it was, they didn’t see anything wrong with it.”

The sexist culture that prevails at the ITF has left women workers feeling unsafe. 

A survey of ITF workers seen by Novara Media conducted in 2025 by the ITF’s Unite branch, which represents the federation’s staff, found that nearly 40% of women respondents had safety concerns attending informal ITF events, while around a third had concerns attending formal events. Nearly half said they had experienced, witnessed or been told of instances of sexual harassment, including unwanted sexual advances or jokes. 22% referred to incidents of unwanted sexualised touching such as of the breasts, buttocks or genitals, 15% referred to sexual coercion, and 10% referred to single or multiple incidents of sexual assault.

When respondents who had reported sexual harassment or assault were asked about the ITF’s responses to these incidents, only 5% said they were satisfied overall, and none felt the ITF had put in place measures to protect women going forward. 64% said they felt they were not taken seriously. Speaking to Novara Media, one former staff member used the term “headfuck” to describe how it felt to work for an organisation that prided itself on promoting gender equality, but which treated its female staff abysmally.

One example of the ITF’s poor treatment of its female employees began in 2013. A woman was posted to the ITF’s office in Delhi, India, tasked with eradicating alleged corruption. She exposed malpractice, including the use of staff members’ expenses to pay for liquor and personal birthday parties.

The woman’s work implicated a senior ITF official, who was given a disciplinary hearing and a final written warning. The senior official, however, was later appointed as her line manager – a position he then used to create a “hostile environment” for her.

Eventually, in 2021, the woman who had investigated corruption filed a complaint about her treatment, along with three others. This was despite fear that, as one put it, complaining was “political suicide”.

The ITF initially appointed two inexperienced male lawyers to investigate the incident. When the women objected, Naina Kapur, an eminent lawyer who pioneered a landmark workplace sexual harassment law in India in 1997, was commissioned instead. 

Kapur’s report, seen by Novara Media, took around a year to complete, and could hardly have been more damning. It concluded that the ITF was “a masculine, sexist, patriarchal boys club”.

“How was it conceivable that the person against whom disciplinary action was taken for corruption related practices … subsequently became [the woman’s] boss?” it asked, going on to call the decision “an act which knowingly contributed to the subsequent (and wholly unavoidable) acts of disrespect, harassment, exclusion, bullying, discriminatory treatment” that she “endured over the years that followed”. This included “sustained retaliation” against her, which included creating a “hostile environment”, “blocking opportunities” and “humiliating and belittling” her “through public gestures, in front of ITF and at an international forum”.

It wasn’t just the woman who investigated corruption who was subjected to such behaviour from the senior official. The report also found “a pattern of inappropriate behaviour” towards women staff “continued persistently, unabated and with limited accountability … over a period of years”. Such “disrespect” extended to the “women’s department as a whole”, and that which was “overtly sexist” included “spreading lies … about individual complainants”.

The senior official was dismissed for gross misconduct in July 2022 for failing to comply with the conditions of the investigation.

The report also highlighted serious failings on the part of ITF management. The leadership showed a “woeful lack of understanding towards a classic case of workplace harassment” which was “nothing short of negligent”. When the senior official’s “reach and influence” was pitted against equality concerns, “vested interest prevailed”.

It also exposed a yawning gap between the ITF’s equality policies and day-to-day practice, evidenced by “the sheer number of incidents which occurred over years” and “the absence of any meaningful accountability”. It noted that “mere lip service” was paid to these policies, “reflective of a profoundly sexist … culture” which “communicated tolerance of such harassment”, and while policies pledged to offer an “active programme” to raise awareness about bullying, “to the best of our knowledge no such programme exists”.

The senior official’s attempts to trivialise and deflect from the issues raised by the woman who filed the complaint were facilitated by “messages of appeasement” from the leadership towards him, which “prioritised leadership over and above the equality harm to ITF women in positions of unequal power”, the report found.

Assistant general secretary Rob Johnston, who helped to manage the woman’s complaint, came in for particular criticism. Johnston was “wholly ill-equipped” to have done so, as he showed a “uniquely inadequate and unsatisfactory grasp of both gender and workplace harassment issues”.

That Johnston was part of an “all male cast” tasked with handling gender violations “without any knowledge, skill or expertise … was not only negligent but displayed a casual disregard for gender based harassment and the women’s workforce at the ITF,” it read. Johnston told Novara Media he disputes the allegations against him. 

The affair “raises crucial questions with respect to the functioning of the ITF leadership as a whole”, Kapur wrote.

The ITF said it had “taken on board all of the comments in their spirit and intent to continue strengthening our internal governance procedures”.

Hollow promises.

Kapur’s report stated that it should be circulated widely, particularly to the complainants. But a source with knowledge of the situation told Novara Media that the complainants only ever received it in heavily redacted form, and that the recommendations were hidden. 

These recommendations included financial compensation for the complainants – which was never given – and that Johnston be “prohibited from in any way responding to and/or dealing with such complaints of a similar nature, arising in any ITF workplaces, now or in the future”.

In December 2022, two months after Kapur filed her report, Cotton sent an email to all ITF staff acknowledging “serious concerns” that women in the federation had been prevented from “making their full contribution, through feeling respected, safe, valued and included”. 

“Every woman working within our organisation who has faced or is facing misogyny, bullying or harassment, as well as any related inadequate action or inaction needs to be heard since every worker has a right to a safe and equitable working environment,” Cotton said.

“There cannot be a culture of impunity at the ITF that enables unacceptable behaviours … Cultural change is challenging and requires commitment and action from all of us, and it starts with me … Time for words to become action.”

By 2023, an internal investigation seen by Novara Media by consultancy Howlett Brown had highlighted a culture of favouritism and special treatment for the general secretary’s inner circle and a lack of fit for purpose anti-bullying policies. But since then, attempts to improve workplace culture at the ITF have been marred by concerns from staff that the federation’s senior leadership team is avoiding accountability.

Talks over a mutual respect policy collapsed over concerns that Cotton would be shielded from accountability. A report from the Unite branch on gender from 2025 notes that in 2024, the policy was “rejected by our members due to concerns over the process in the event of a complaint against the general secretary”.

There is scepticism in particular about the appointment of Sharan Burrow to lead a gender review. Burrow, the former head of the ITUC who mediated between Cotton and the woman involved in the alleged incident in the Vatican, is perceived by sources who spoke to Novara Media as one of Cotton’s allies. One current staffer said: “She’s one of the closest people to him – it doesn’t make sense.”

Staff are also concerned that Burrow’s review will consider work on gender rights that has happened at the ITF, but not investigate the federation’s misogynistic workplace culture.

A current ITF staff member said in their view, “Cotton went about systematically disabling every governance mechanism that should have held him to account. For years we kept pulling levers and expecting change to happen, only to realise that the wires had been cut.

“A functional organisation should have checks and balances in place to hold senior leaders to account in cases of misconduct. Those essentially don’t exist at the ITF. If you’re part of the general secretary’s boys club, then you can get away with almost anything.”

For one member of staff, the repeated failure of the leadership to deal with the federation’s misogynistic culture became too much to bear. 

Jodi Evans was the ITF’s women’s officer. It was Evans’ job to lead projects affecting women transport workers around the world; however, she found herself responding to complaints about inappropriate workplace behaviour. 

The ITF’s failure to crack down on this behaviour led her to file a grievance against Cotton in February 2024. In documents seen by Novara Media, Evans said: “I found it … distressing to literally run from hearing one traumatised disclosure relating to time in that particular space – not in my job description – to facilitating a session on gender-based violence at work.” 

Evans raised concerns about “multiple serious violations including sexual harassment and sexual assault”, but despite being told she had Cotton’s full support, “no meaningful support ever came for me or any other woman being abused in my organisation”.

In her grievance letter, Evans claimed it was an “open secret” that delegates and staff would visit brothels and arrange for sex workers to come to their hotels. She also said women were “controlled” by male leaders, “even to the extent of having their personal relationships deliberately destroyed”.

In 2019, Evans removed herself from work for several months and later concluded that she was suffering from trauma.

In the letter, Evans said the impacts she suffered from working for the ITF were ongoing, including “terrible nightmares that include my own brutal death”.

“I drink excessively for the numbing impact, and as such have gained a lot of weight in a short period,” she said. “My immune system is weakened. I wake at night and have night sweats.”

She wrote in her letter that she would never work in the labour movement again. “My experience at the ITF makes our movement feel repulsive and a desperately unsafe place for me,” she said. “It has broken me.” 

Evans left the union later in 2024.

A current ITF staff member who spoke to Novara Media confirmed the account of what happened in Evans’ letter. “As the women’s officer, it was Evans’ role to speak truth to power. It was Steve’s job to protect that truth, to listen, and to lead change. There was nobody stopping him – he is the general secretary,” they said.

“That relentless cycle of hollow promises and delay wore her [Evans] down completely. She tried everything, year after year to reach him, to make him see the harm his leadership was causing, to make him care enough to change. But the gaslighting, the rejection, the inaction – it broke her.”

A consultant for the ITF who supervised Evans filed a report in which she wrote: “Seeing this bright, confident, intelligent leader be deteriorated emotionally and mentally by the constant prejudice she was a victim to caused me so much concern I consulted with my supervisor to talk about what I may need to be clearer about with Jodi and her team regarding the depth of my worries for them. 

“I spoke to my supervisor about the evidence of post-traumatic stress symptoms that Jodi was experiencing, such as hyper-vigilance, constant anxiety, nightmares and constant distress.”

Evans was “vicariously traumatised and personally traumatised”, the consultant added. It was so bad that when Evans went off sick, she “felt relieved and desperately sad”.

The consultant recommended “intensive therapy” for Evans to help her recover from her experiences at the ITF, and told Novara Media that in her opinion, “they [Evans and her colleagues] “were being gaslighted all the time.”

Evans declined to comment for this piece.

‘A deletion of organisational memory.’

The ITF is currently in the process of a mass-redundancy at its London office, getting rid of 25% of its staff. Novara Media previously reported allegations – which the ITF denies – that the process was being used to target union members from the ITF’s Unite branch.

Despite Kapur’s recommendation that he be kept far away from processes with equalities implications, assistant general secretary Johnston is the “change lead” for the redundancy process.

Preliminary analysis of staffing changes to the Unite bargaining unit from the branch seen by Novara Media shows that 80% of the 40 staff who are leaving are women. “This is worrying in light of ongoing concerns regarding gender inequality in our workplace”, the branch said in a statement. 

Those who have taken voluntary redundancy have had to sign non-disclosure agreements, leading many to worry that the redundancy process is being used to delete the institutional memory of the ITF.

One current employee told Novara Media they thought the ITF was “using a redundancy [process] to silence staff”.

“What’s happening at the ITF right now is almost like a deletion of organisational memory,” they said. “Instead of dealing with the problem, instead of protecting people, you get rid of all the people who know what’s happened before so that if it happens again the new people won’t realise it’s a systematic issue. They’ll go through the things we went all through for years.

“This is all just a game to them where they can pretend to have meetings, but nothing changes, and you are just as much at risk – if not more – than you were ten years ago.”

In a statement to Novara Media, Paddy Crumlin, ITF president, and Frank Moreels, who will take over the presidency in January 2027, said: “We recognise that the transport industry remains overwhelmingly male-dominated and poorly regulated, with systemic failures from both employers and regulatory bodies. Within this environment, misogyny, exploitation, and racism have too often gone unchecked. 

“The ITF is committed to changing that reality and is taking ongoing action to eliminate unacceptable behaviour. We accept that the pervasive misogyny and lack of accountability will inevitably be reflected in the culture and governance of the ITF.

“Our policies have long been focused on confronting the systemic failures within the industry that enable companies to evade accountability to their workforce – particularly women – and reinforce a culture where discrimination, the denial of rights, and the absence of basic employment protections are routine. We reject any other characterisation of the ITF.

“By any measure, progress has been made to advance gender equality, in the industry and within the governance of the ITF. The ITF takes these accusations seriously. Processes have been put in place to ensure that any employee or participant at ITF events can raise a complaint safely and confidentially through our mutual respect and independent reporting mechanisms. Individuals are held accountable for their actions, regardless of their seniority.

“In response, the ITF Executive Board established an Affiliate Oversight Group (AOG), composed of senior women leaders from across our global movement, to hold the general secretary and ITF leadership to account on gender equality matters. The AOG has appointed an independent consultant to review progress and make recommendations for further improvements.

“We are unable to comment on the details of any specific cases due to confidentiality and commitment to privacy. Any allegations of this nature are dealt with in a clear and transparent fashion. Cases will continue to be investigated rigorously and expeditiously, and mediated and resolved as soon as practical. This has happened and will continue to be the focus of ITF policy.

“The broader historical claims put to us are selective and, in many cases, incorrect. They do not reflect the culture of the ITF today.”